Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Friday September 19, 2008 @04:02PM
from the scaredy-cats-and-retards-the-new-political-parties dept.

Pentagram writes "Researchers writing in Science report that the political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy they are to startle. They found that subjects who were more fearful were more likely to have right wing views, such as being in favor of capital punishment and higher defense budgets. The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments."

A November 2007 Gallup poll [gallup.com] reveals that Republicans by a wide margin across all age, gender, income, and education levels report significantly better mental health than Democrats and Independents.

As we observe in nature, only the paranoids survive. The others are just nuts. LOL.

Let me see if I got this straight, the experienced Republican PRESIDENTIAL nominee chose poorly because he selected as his running mate someone no more qualified to be President than the Democratic PRESIDENTIAL candidate?

It is a fact that artists, nerds and techies tend to be more mentally shall I say, weird, than the rest of the population.

Yes, but that's only a subset of the left, and a more extreme subset at that.

Ask yourself how mentally "weird" the people on the extreme right tend to be. Think of the hardcore fundamentalist Christians, alcoholic rednecks, etc. In my (anecdotal) experience, such folks tend to be more likely to exhibit signs of extreme narcissism or borderline sociopathy and psychopathy.

So consider the possibility that both of our anecdotal observations are accurate, and consider it along with jbeach's point about the unreliability of polls that depend on self-reported data. Which group do you think is more likely to acknowledge that they have a mental problem? The group with the redneck who beats his dog, or the one with the goth chick who cuts on herself? The "crazy Jesus lady" [youtube.com] or the schizophrenic artist?

Granted, none of my speculations here are what you'd call scientific, but then neither are yours, and the Gallup poll wasn't either for the reason jbeach pointed out. All it tells you is that more conservative people claim, when polled, claim to have better mental health, compared to the claims of liberals.

A November 2007 Gallup poll reveals that Republicans by a wide margin across all age, gender, income, and education levels report significantly better mental health than Democrats and Independents.

Just to be clear. They rate their own mental health as excellent. They believe they're the ones who are sane and everybody else is crazy.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls.

It appears Democrats at least have an open mind to the possibility of being wrong.

That's exactly why I think this study is totally bogus. They're basically assuming that the current Democrat and Republican political platforms are 1) the only two possible viewpoints people could have, and 2) basically unchanging ideals. There's tons of people who don't agree with either, or agree with parts of both parties' platforms. These platforms aren't the way they are because people believe in them; they have arisen out of political expediency. For instance, why are the Republicans in favor of religious fundamentalism, foreign wars, and deregulation of business? Because these things actually go together? No. This came about because the power brokers in the Republican Party panders to religious fundamentalists in order to get votes, so they can get elected and pursue their economic agenda which benefits their wealthy friends.

The Democrats aren't much different. They pander to poor people and people afraid of guns with promises of welfare and gun control, so they can get votes and enact laws (like the DMCA) which benefit their wealthy friends and campaign donors.

These parties would happily change their platforms if it netted them more votes, as long as they could continue enriching themselves and their wealthy friends. These politicians are sociopaths and don't actually care about society, their country, the people they serve, or whether their laws are right or wrong. Why else do you think Republicans, who are always bashing gay people, are frequently discovered (in airport restrooms, no less) to be gay themselves?

they simply note that people who claim to have strong opinions toward right wing viewpoints and left wing viewpoints also tend to sort by this startle reflex.

To address your point, the republicans wouldn't succeed in pandering to christians if they didn't have more in common with other right wingers than the opposition did. that "mjore in common" is generally social conservativism, which is the kind of view this study is talking about

Oh please. Left wingers are just as happy to surrender their civil rights. Left wingers are the ones that are always worried about "offending" people, remember? And who voted for the Patriot Act? Yep, both sides of the aisle.

You're not going to find any "brave and bold people willing to live free" with either the Dems or the Reps. Only the Libertarians care about such concepts.

Oh please. Left wingers are just as happy to surrender their civil rights... And who voted for the Patriot Act? Yep, both sides of the aisle.

It's important not to confuse "left wing" or "liberal" with "Democratic Party". The current Democratic party holds to liberal ideals about as well as the current Republican party holds to conservative ideals.

Wallstreet 2. The role of Gordon Gecko is revised by Jar Jar Binks. When asked for comment on initial reaction to the casting, George Lucas claimed "people just don't understand the range of an actor like Jar Jar."

Being easily frightened doesn't have anything to do with being a coward. Cowardice is not facing your fears, or being dominated by them. And I would argue that being easily frightened in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing:

A very easy example: An easily frightened solider is walking in the woods. He hears something and is frightened, and immediately flinches. A bullet flies over his head, and he turns and returns fire, killing the enemey. A few miles away, another solider is walking. He is not easily frightened or startled. He hears something, and calmly turns his head in the direction of the sound. The bullet goes straight through his face, killing him.

In an fundementally safe society like America in the 21st century, being easily frightened may seem like a defect, but you can't necessarily say that's true. Say there's a threat who's actual impact is unknowable to a given sample of people. People who are very frighetend of it may want to react more than peope who aren't easily frightened, but since we don't know the actual level of the threat, we can't tell if group A is over-reaction or group B is under-reacting. I'm sure there's some rad game theory solution to that problem.

Closer to home, I was definitely a nerd-tastic "flincher" in high school -- jocks could make a fist five feet away from me and I'd flinch and duck. Was I a pussy? Maybe, but I also got randomly punched a lot less than some of my less reactive friends.

Good example. The problem with many "liberals" is that they have a silly, rosy view of people and the world, and think there's nothing to be afraid of with people who are "different", even if their religion tells them they need to kill you. They say we don't need guns to protect ourselves, when there's people suffering from violent home invasions all around us in our cities.

But then the problem with Republicans (Republican politicians at least) is that they tell us these people who want to kill us are loc

A very easy example: An easily frightened solider is walking in the woods. He hears something and is frightened, and immediately flinches. A bullet flies over his head, and he turns and returns fire, killing the enemey. A few miles away, another solider is walking. He is not easily frightened or startled. He hears something, and calmly turns his head in the direction of the sound. The bullet goes straight through his face, killing him.

"More accurately, easily frightened people tend to become republicans. That doesn't mean republicans are cowards. "

Well, can you blame them really?

I mean...look at the scary looking people the Dems have trotted out in recent history...Dukakis (freaky eyebrows), John Kerry (looked like Herman Munster), and now Obama who not only has a weird name, but, those ear?!?!

Actually not acting on fear may mean that you're infected with Toxoplasma gondii [nationalgeographic.com]. The actual study has no value judgments as to what level of fear is more adaptive, just that there is a difference on social conservatism.

I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.

No, but being too quick to "perceive" such a need -- that's cowardice.

(Over-re)acting out of all proportion to the severity of the threat -- that's cowardice.

Letting it skew your priorities to the point that you neglect to protect yourself against other (less dramatic but equally or more important) dangers -- that's not only cowardice, it's stupid and makes you less safe.

I've never understood the big opposition to gay rights/sex/marriage/whatever. Let's call it what it is: one group imposing their religion and personal "ick" bias on another group.

Let's break down the numbers. First, for every male gay couple out there, there are theoretically 2 more women out there looking for a guy to be with. Considering the world's population is pretty close to being 50-50 m/f, anything that tips the balance in our favor is pure goodness, especially among the/. crowd. Second, for every lesbian out there... well, I know I can't explain why, but we all know that two women together is inexplicably hot, even if us guys have zero chance of being involved. So, yeah... that's pure goodness too. What's not too like?

I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.

Then how would you define it?

Perhaps cowardice is when you act afraid but someone else doesn't want you to, because they'd rather you risk making a sacrifice. (And especially since they'd rather you take the risk instead of them!)

The researchers commented on this situation on NPR this morning. Yes, you could potentially see Republicans that way. But the researchers suggested that you could also see Democrats as "lacking in a basic sense of self-preservation."

The researchers went on to say that they don't believe that either label is appropriate. Rather, they hope both sides will use this information to better understand one another.

From my own perspective, I feel that it's also worth pointing out that both sides tend to follow their ideals. It's not like Republicans tend to avoid military service after demanding it, and it's not like Democrats seek military service due to a lack of self-preservation. The two sides merely react to certain stimulus, but the actual psychology of the drive is obviously more complex. Which leads me to my next point.

The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments.

Many of the other researchers interviewed by NPR were skeptical of these findings. Their belief was that the study failed to show that these responses were set biologically and not by environmental stimuli. So in fact, it may be that Republicans are more suspicious of attacks than Democrats due to their environmental training. Which certainly seems more likely than dividing people up into "cowards" and "idiot-savants".

A propos of not much, I've spoken with several people who have admitted that they are voting for McCain, and when pressed as to why (not in an interrogatory way, I assure you - mostly out of general interest), it boiled down to Obama's black AND his middle name is Hussein. One person actually said (and I quote) "He went to a Muslim school, and I don't care what anyone says about it - that stuff gets IN THERE" as she pointed to her head. I'm not sure what "stuff" she was referring to. That was there only reason for voting for McCain. While I don't feel that voting for McCain automatically makes a person a Republican, it certainly seems that their vote is being cast out of a complete sense of fear of that which they don't understand.

I would not argue that voting against something that concerns you is a good idea; however, their fear is SO misplaced (and racist, or at least xenophobic), that it certainly paints them as uneducated and ridiculous.

Some things are more important than self preservation in the long term. The lack of understanding of this is why our civil liberties are being eroded severely by Republicans. They'd rather live in a surveillance society than risk death by terrorism.

Theft if theft. I'm by no means rich, but I pay 28% of my income to the government and something tells me not even a whole 1% actually helps care for poor children... dropping bombs, invading countries, corporate bailouts, welfare to able bodies, spying on citizens...

Need I go on about the various horrors that the wealth I make for 2hours and 20minutes out of every day enables? Here is a novel thought, why don't they not take my money and I can give it directly to the poor children. Why does the government need a cut?

I've seen good statistics that support this statement simplistically. To whit, conservatives donate more, as share of income, to charities than liberals do. Not poor people, charities. However, these donations include the amounts that people donate to churches, most of which does not make it back to an actual poor populations. In contrast, liberal donations tend to be more to organizations which are directly serving user communities.

For a simple example, Mormons are asked to donate 10+% of their pretax

It's interesting but I think the author seems to be misinterpreting his data (my assumption, of course, is based exclusively on what is written in this article). I would suggest that many liberals altruistic needs are taken care of in how they vote while for conservatives, who's policies in government generally embody a "you're on your own" mentality, feel a greater need to give to charities. I mean, if conservatives were so altruistic, why wouldn't they favor universal health care so the poor no longer hav

Your question is biased in an of itself. If liberals are so charitable, why are they so willing to add an inefficient government system that will increase our taxload, giving people less money to spend on medicine, and could eventually put medical progress itself at risk?

Not saying I espouse either value, but it's not a fair question:)

Personally I think it's a strange urban versus rural mentality.

Poor conservatives tend to come from a rural cultural background where you didn't have much materially, but always had both a farm to keep you fed, and a large social network of family and friends to lean on in times of crisis. Even if it no longer holds true entirely, the culture is still based around the consequences of that mentality - you don't depend on the government for things, because your core needs are handled, and while you expect to stay poor through hard work for yourself (on your own farm, or family's farm) you will never be desperate. Even with the medical situation - the whole cultural memory of a poor country doctor accepting a chicken because that's all they had to give is a strong ideal that still means something to people, even if it isn't something that's reasonable now - in a small town you know everyone well enough that sometime someone has done that sort of favor for you at some point in your life, and you've done the same.

Someone who grew up in it can fill in the urban half of this better than I, but it seems that being in a larger city, you are much more interdependent on society as a system, as opposed to individuals. You generally don't have that level of your own farm produce and land to fall back on - if you lose your job, if you can't get a paying job, you're on the street. And there's a lot more people around in general, so instead of the homeless population of the town being named "Bob," it becomes a real social concern. You're more likely to see police in action, or their failure to act. Your experience with guns is a couple drug dealers shooting each other intead of hunting a deer to add to your dinner or your grandma's story about scaring off robbers. Government and society in general just has a lot more to do with your life - so you expect it to do something for it, look to it for answers because the problems you see aren't of a scale where the preacher at church can just take a donation to help the Jones' get through a hard couple months.

I guess that's where I see people's base leaning of conservative versus liberal coming from. Anything beyond and more intelligent than that requires real thought and investigation, which is more than most people put into it.

While of course broad generalizations always have flaws here and there I pretty much agree with what you describe above in terms of the sources of values for the two competeing modern ideologies today. Urban centers, even in the deep south, show this trend while rural areas, even in California, show this trend as well.

The one thing I will ad to this, however, is that we are increasingly becoming an urban culture and have been for some time. The number of people in what would typically be called rural areas

That would be predominantly by bible-belt republicans who I feel are effectively duped into voting republican due to religious intolerance without real regard for the fact that their grand old party doesn't represent their ecomonic interests at all.

Who cares what part of the country they are from, or what church they worship at, if any? Are you seriously proposing that their charity doesn't count for some reason? Are you saying that their charity should be counted as coming from Democrats, because the only reason you think someone would vote Repub is because you "feel" they were "duped"?

Doesn't represent their economic interests? Yeah, I know, everyone loves to hate Bush, but the fact is that under Bush, the little guy has gotten a better deal on

I think everyone is missing some important details from the study. The beliefs they selected for were strictly based on socially conservative values. They didn't look at party affiliation or fiscal values.

So they looked for people that were anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-death penalty, pro-drug war, etc. While many "conservatives" fall into that group, many more are simply fiscal conservatives, believing in smaller, more constrained federal government, greater freedom and civil rights, etc. And

Or, possibly, you're afraid that sometimes other people might - from time to time - be unable to afford adequate health care for their children.

I come from a mid-sized, stable family. I have a good university education. My parents are enjoying (and can afford) their comfortable retirement. I have a roof over my head, a share of a nice vacation property, and a healthy nest egg in the bank. I'

I actually see it somewhat orthogonal to that. In many ways, the democrats are optimists while the republicans are pessimists.

I disagree completely. Republicans are the optimists! They tend to think that:
- private charities will be enough to help the poor
- abstinence education is the best sex education
- people know how to best manage their own money
- terrorists can be contained and killed-off

If pulled off properly, communism is the ideal economic system.

Communism takes away many freedoms, and is only "perfect" from an authoritarian perspective. Perfect to MANY people would be a world in which everyone gets along without a strong government to impede.

Aristotle says the virtues are always midpoints between extremes, and the extremes are vices.

The opposite of cowardice isn't courage, it's rashness. Courage is the temperate midpoint between the vice of cowardice and the vice of rashness. Courage accepts danger but acts, which makes it different from either extreme.

Rashness and cowardice are the kinds of superficial opposites that have many inner similarities. The coward fears to act, and the fool fears to think.

If by "inconspicuous charity" you mean forcing "charity" on others, then yes.

I'm not driven by fear of loss, I'm driven by wanting people to be responsible for themselves as much as possible. I'm driven by a desire for consequences for actions, good and bad. I'm driven by the realization that if it's impossible to fail then few will have the motivation to succeed. I'm driven by the idea that a safety net is a last resort, not the basis for perpetual underclass of citizens. I'm driven by the fact that th

"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" - I guess the message there is supposed to be "having been mugged and now being familiar with the true nature of the world around them, they learned that the ideals they formerly embraced were foolishly misguided" but I always read it more as "having been mugged they allowed fear to take over their lives, replacing their sense of justice with a more Machiavellian approach to the world."

I always read it more as "having been mugged they allowed fear to take over their lives, replacing their sense of justice with a more Machiavellian approach to the world."

I think that's a naive interpretation of the saying. In this case "mugged" tends to be a metaphor for "negative experience". A negative experience does sometimes teach people to be a little harsher.

I know I tried a hands-off approach with administrating a web forum for a quite a while, and quickly found that a few disruptive members were driving away all the actual contributors to the discussions. I tried being reasonable and applying polite warnings. I mean, we were all adults, right? The only thing that happened was that these users got good at skirting the edge of the rules. They'd cross the line regularly, but tried not to do enough to warrant a perma-ban. They got especially good at pushing the buttons of other users such that otherwise contributing members became part of the problem. Then these users were able to play a game of public appeal when the mods pointed a finger at them.

In the end, there was only one solution. I clamped down. I hated doing it, I really did. But I managed to drive those users out, keep careful controls on the direction of threads, and attract many of our lost users to return. The community came together and really helped the site(s) it supported to thrive after that. I initially got some blame for the bans, but most users ended up thankful after only a short period of time. (Which I honestly didn't expect.)

I eventually relaxed the controls a bit, but I still found I had to keep vigilant or else someone would show up to attempt to ruin the forums again.

What I'm getting at is that Republicans aren't always wrong in those respects. Sometimes control and structure ARE necessary. It's just difficult for them to always know when. There's a fairly good talk from a psychologist on TED TV who echos these thoughts [ted.com].

On the flip-side, I think the recent issue over deregulation shows that Republicans do try to relax controls, sometimes with disastrous effects. Which simply reinforces their ideas of control and structure.

Actually, it's not a straw-man argument, it's an illustration of a fallacy. A well-known fallacy, in fact -- the fallacy of compromise. While some sort of compromise is very often useful or effective, it does not follow logically that a compromise between two arbitrary suggestions is necessarily superior. In many cases, a "compromise solution" makes no sense; in others, it's clearly not the "fair" choice.

There is no innate "middle ground". If you define it as a "reasonable compromise", you're imposing a particular person's arbitrary sense of "reasonable" anyway.

That saying has an important corollary: "A liberal is a conservative who has been laid off". It applies equally well as the first, and taken together they illustrate that both left wing and right allow themselves to be ruled by fear, differing only in what particular things they're afraid of.

I'm sure that they're confusing authoritarian with economically right, both of which describe Republicans, but two entirely separate things.

It's entirely possible to be extremely to the economic left and still be every bit if not more authoritarian than the Republican party tends to be. Just look at the USSR under Stalin.

It's also entirely possible to be extremely to the economic right and be very non-authoritarian. Probably the best example of this would be the American Libertarian party which has a strong free market belief as well as a very hands-off approach to government involvement in the personal lives of people.

Check out http://www.politicalcompass.org/ [politicalcompass.org] for a better explanation and to see where different political parties from different parts of the world are at. I've found a lot of interesting things on that site. The most interesting to me is that the vast majority of European governments aren't too far off of the US Democratic party, despite what a lot of European posters on/. would argue to the contrary.

In retrospect.... I'm in the UK, and the more right-wing the paper, the more knee-jerk to headlines.

I guess it's also what gives the conservatives (small c) that weird advantage in polls- their always more likely to be 'in tune' with the masses, because their opinions are always more likely to have been formed off the back of the most recent scare story.

Yeah, I'm often doubtful about these sorts of psychology stories, but this one actually makes a certain sort of sense to me. In the traditional meaning of the word, being "conservative" means that you dislike quick and drastic changes. The idea that there would be a connection between disliking change quick changes (moving from the known to the unknown) and being generally more fearful and easily startled doesn't seem strange or surprising.

Also, the connections between being more fearful, wanting a strong army, and wanting to be "tough on crime" seem pretty clear. You could have convinced me without research.

On the other hand, none of this necessarily means that these opinions are wrong. Even if they're more fearful, it's not clear that it means they're "too fearful". I'm not trying to argue that they are or that they aren't, but just suggesting that we all try to avoid jumping to conclusions. (I'm also not accusing the parent post of claiming that it means they're wrong)

I think being startled has much more to do with the ability to concentrate than with fear.

I am the most startled person I know... If I am concentrating on something, I make a total vacuum, I block all my senses... if at that point I am distracted by someone I will jump a foot in the air and scream. I don't consider myself fearful though.

Right wing in the US has, for most of its existence, been isolationist and thus favored less military rather than more. I don't believe there's any connection.

This definitely affects Democrats, too. My father-in-law is a staunch democrat, and he's also very anxious all the time. It affects his political views because he worries greatly about things like health care and such, things which he thinks the gov't can protect us from.

There's a well-known saying: "A Democrat is a Republican who's been arrested, and a Republican is a Democrat who's been mugged."

I know that the saying works for me, too. My wife and I were the victims of gang violence (well, just some inner-city middle schoolers who broke our car window while we were in the car, causing my wife's face to bleed) and I definitely think it caused me to lean to the right, and more recently I was arrested (charges later dismissed) which caused me to not trust the police and lean to the left.

Now, I don't think I'm really on either side. The police aren't going to really do too much to you as long as you don't make their lives difficult, and I think I can handle myself and my family if the whole economy implodes. Politicians usually don't actually make you safer. Good neighbors, family, and friends do.

It seems to me that much of the current war on * sham is based on irrational fears. It's well known that humans have difficulty understanding on a qualitative level very low and very high probabilities.

So, for example, people might be far more concerned about being killed in a 9/11 repeat (5000 people) rather than in an automobile accident (~20,000 p/yr), despite the latter being far more of a risk to them.

Of course there are reasons to fear the former more than the latter that are reasonable, such as placing more value on how one dies than if (I don't consider this unreasonable; I'd rather be shot by a stranger than my best friend)

FTA: "decided to test the idea that liberal and conservative (or "protective") social beliefs are related to individuals' sensitivity to threat."

So really what they tested was whether people who have more protective attitudes toward others react more to fear stimulus. Well, isn't that obvious? Correlation OR causation, it seems a pretty direct link that if you are afraid of something, you'd want to protect against it, and if you are afraid of more things, you'd want to protect against more things, and if the intensity of your fear is higher, the level of protection would increase.

So how on Earth did they translate that into "conservative" political views?

When it comes to the physiological response, a more complete description might be "fight or flight", as Fear and Aggression are closely linked. In addition, I've noticed that Conservatives tend to be afraid of People, while Liberals tend to be afraid of Things.

To clarify, I mean that Conservatives seem to focus on threats with a human face -- foreign terrorists and rogue dictators without; criminals, illegal immigrants, and gays within (gays are a particularly interesting example of "threat", due to an odd mix of cultural and psychological reasons, instead of being any threat to life/liberty/livelihood). This leads to harsher law enforcement and big military budgets.

While Liberals seem to focus on systematic dangers, like pollution or global warming. This leads to lots of attention to things like pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and genetically modified organisms; resulting in lots of regulation and governmental intervention.

I'm sorry, but what have you been smoking? I think I need some. People defined as liberal are rarely if ever the ones shouting down the opposition. If anything they like to talk everything out too much so nothing ever gets done. This is why the democratic party is so fragmented and why they frequently lose in elections because they don't have solidarity.

You seem to be describing the current republican party labeling descent as unAmerican or non-patriotic. As Stephen Colbert likes to say, "Why do you hate A

Talk about fear of competing ideas, you Libs need a mirror. Variations of this story appear here and on every libtard site every few weeks now, claiming conservative ideas are the result of mental defect. Because if you can keep that idea formly in yer heads you can justify the childish antics you guys normally do when exposed to a different set of ideas, shout it down. Because if the other side is mentally ill there isn't a reason to even allow them to speak.

To a liberal, 'diversity' is defined as all colors, gender identities and faiths all thinking exactly alike. Because the one thing liberalism can't tolerate is reasoned debate since the whole system is based on emotion.

No, I don't think liberalism is a mental illness in return. I think it is evil. You guys have free will, you chose the wrong side. Of course you convince yourselves that notions like good and evil are outdated because few will admit to serving evil so you solve that problem by handwaving the whole question away.

If we can open that argument up I'm convinced it will be as easy to convince the undecided that the core of the Democratic party is indeed evil as it was to win the argument the Soviet Union was utterly Evil.

Unless you believe that the core of the Republican party is also evil, I'm afraid I can't support your position.

I'm younger than you are, so I missed the Cold War scare that you're referring to. Consequently, I don't have an irrational fear and hatred of the USSR drilled into me, so telling me that the Democratic party is as evil as Russia was in Reagan's day just doesn't make the emotional connection you were going for.

I can see that if you start with the premise that Cold War era Russia was inherently evil, and the Democratic party promotes some of the same ideas that were a cornerstone of Russian society, then the Democratic party must be evil because those ideas must be evil. However, please try to understand that many of us do not take this premise to be a given. If you believe socialized healthcare is evil, you'll have to argue the case for why it is evil, not just draw a connection to Russia. If you believe a so-called "progressive" tax system (in which wealthier people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes) is evil, you'll have to explain why it's evil. If you believe that charging suspected terrorists with crimes and prosecuting them in a court of law, rather than simply detaining them without charge indefinitely and subjecting them to torture, is evil, you'll have to explain why. If you believe requiring a warrant in order to eavesdrop on someone's phone calls is evil, make your case.

On a more rational (than my last post) note, how is it a defect to be more easily afraid? Fear is a GOOD thing when one is facing a real threat; it causes one to take actions to defend oneself (such as increasing military spending or reaching for a rock, as the case may be)

You could just as reasonably argue that liberals irrationally shrug off threats that are dangerous to them, and that they are incorrect, or make a more fair argument that people who hold extremist beliefs fair to accurately gauge risk.

Even if it is the liberals who are right and conservatives who are wrong here I hardly think you can call this a "disease", more a different worldview.

I'm a lot more scared of being abducted and held without trial by my own government than dying in a tiny terrorist attack; this is no more or less rational than someone with the opposite fears, and both are less rational than someone who is afraid of cars because of the risk of death.

Dude, not everyone who's on welfare is lazy. Besides, it's not right to punish a child for their parent being a fuckwit.

This is a land of opportunity - without some basic assistance, some people will HAVE no opportunity. Look at my girlfriend. Her mother can't work because of a VERY serious back problem; her father won't do a damn thing to help. Without some assistance, she wouldn't be able to do a damn thing with her life.

Since the US is the leading user of recreational drugs in the world ( the amount of money US citizens spend on illegal substances dwarfs the budgets of most countries), we should really take illegal drug use into account when we interpret most American social behavior.

The right wingers tend to be split into two big groups: The wealthier old money types and the poorer rural types.

The left wingers are wealthier intellectuals and poorer hipsters.

The wealthy right wingers can afford more cocaine and the poorer use the most popular rural drug Meth. These substances make them jumpier and more paranoid.

The left wingers tend top have the pot smokers, so they are more mellow.

Nope; people who don't have a phobia of tigers aren't exactly having masochistic thoughts about the concept of being attacked by one. If you have to either fear something or love something, life would be much different.

And yes, some Liberal thinking people do enjoy the idea of having consensual anal sex. Welcome to reality.

Hopefully you aren't the kind of person who has his or her suspicions about x, y, and z (all different than you) taking over the country.